This open-access book investigates Francophone Caribbean literature by exploring and analyzing French seventeenth-century travel writings. The book argues for a literary re-examination of the representation of the early colonial Caribbean by proposing theoretical linkages to contemporary Caribbean theories of creolization and archipelagic thinking. Using Édouard Glissant’s notion of points o…
This open access book charts how South Africa’s gold mines have systematically suppressed evidence of hazardous work practices and the risks associated with mining. For most of the twentieth century, South Africa was the world’s largest producer of gold. Although the country enjoyed a reputation for leading the world in occupational health legislation, the mining companies developed a syste…
In this open access book, Mikael Hård tells a story of how people around the world challenged the production techniques and products brought by globalization. Retaining their autonomy and freedom, creative individuals selectively adopted or rejected modern gadgets, tools, and machines. In standard historical narratives, globalization is portrayed as an unstoppable force that flattens all obsta…
This open access book addresses a question fundamental to the histories of empire and Africa: at the point of the colonial encounter, how was knowledge made? How did different communities, with little or no prior contact, construct meaning about one another? Amidst huge changes in the politics and economics of a continent, on the cusp of almost complete colonization at the hands of European pow…
This open access book offers an entangled history of hygiene by showing how knowledge of purity, health and cleanliness was shaped by evangelical medical missionaries and their encounters with people in West Africa. By tracing the interactions and negotiations of six Basel Mission doctors, who practised on the Gold Coast and in Cameroon from 1885 to 1914, the author demonstrates how notions of …
This open access book offers an entangled history of hygiene by showing how knowledge of purity, health and cleanliness was shaped by evangelical medical missionaries and their encounters with people in West Africa. By tracing the interactions and negotiations of six Basel Mission doctors, who practised on the Gold Coast and in Cameroon from 1885 to 1914, the author demonstrates how notions of …
Woman and the Colonial State deals with the ambiguous relationship between women of both the European and the Indonesian population and the colonial state in the former Netherlands Indies in the first half of the twentieth century. Based on new data from a variety of sources: colonial archives, journals, household manuals, children's literature, and press surveys, it analyses the women-state re…
This open-access book investigates Francophone Caribbean literature by exploring and analyzing French seventeenth-century travel writings. The book argues for a literary re-examination of the representation of the early colonial Caribbean by proposing theoretical linkages to contemporary Caribbean theories of creolization and archipelagic thinking. Using Édouard Glissant’s notion of points o…
Homi K. Bhabha delivered the 2010 Hegel lecture, evoking the spirit of Hegel in an attempt to understand contemporary issues of ethical witness, historical memory and the rights and representations of minorities in the cultural sphere. Who is our neighbour today? What does hospitality mean for our times? Why is the recognition of others such an agonizing encounter with the alterity of the self?…
Music and Democracy explores music as a resource for societal transformation processes. This book provides recent insights into how individuals and groups used and still use music to achieve social, cultural, and political participation and bring about social change. The contributors present outstanding perspectives on the topic: From the promise and myth of democratization through music techno…